2021-01-27

Cool

• Ow my brain Re-Creating the Porky Pig Animation from Looney Tunes in CSS | CSS-Tricks

etc

• (Matt Stoller) Monopolies Slowed the Vaccine Roll-Out, and Small Business Sped It Up

• Hiding in the Herd: The Product Recall Clustering Phenomenon

• Woman who made mittens worn by Bernie Sanders in meme quit making them after taxes crushed her business

  • Bernie Sanders' inauguration mittens help raise $1.8M for charity

• Tallahassee tornado: Twister strikes Florida's capital, damaging Tallahassee International Airport - CNN

• CIA file on Russian ESP experiments released

• Made in the USA: Socialism for the Rich. Capitalism for the Rest

• The Campaign to Stamp Out Academic Heresy — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal

• Senate Democrats reintroduce DC statehood bill

• Woman goes viral after appearing on TV with dildo behind her

• Study: Just 2% of U.S. teens eat recommended amount of veggies

• Mark Cuban launches a transparent, low cost generic drug company

• Ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry

  • sometimes having a different perspective, even for moments, can be invaluable.

• How do wombats poop cubes? Scientists get to the bottom of the mystery

• Tenn. man charged with posting fake photo of officer’s grave - New York Daily News

Horseshit

• The year global health went local (2021 Annual Letter by Bill Gates)

  • Bill and Melinda Gates: Covid-19 will change how the world thinks about health

  • Bill Gates dismisses 'crazy conspiracy theories' about him and Fauci

• Why N95 Masks Are Still in Short Supply in the U.S.

• Too much methanol FDA issues alert on hand sanitizer products from Mexico

  • 84% of Mexican hand sanitizers toxic or flawed; FDA issues drastic alert

• Walmart is expanding its robot-powered fulfillment centers to ‘dozens of locations’

• New York Times Writer Arrested as Secret Iran Agent Acknowledges He Was Paid by Iranian Government | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com

  “I received checks from the Mission’s UN account and it never occurred to me that I was doing anything illegal,” the New York Times opinion writer, Kaveh Afrasiabi, wrote in a sstatement

• More Freedom Is the Whole Point of Vaccines

• IKEA Buys 11,000 Acres of U.S. Forest to Keep It from Being Developed

• An L.A. councilman struggles with the Pledge of Allegiance, and viewers pick sides

• Gaetz: Death threats surge, and FBI ‘more interested’ in those against Democrats

• LBRY in NYTimes

  Get it? Without exactly lying, Popper associates venture capital with supporting neo-Nazis. Garbage reporting. It’s like saying last year 75% of neo-Nazis ate at McDonald’s, their favorite all-American restaurant. Or, neo-Nazis have been known to use Apple phones to arrange their rallies. Or neo-Nazis often pay for their purchases using a private, untraceable means of payment marked by strange symbols and widely used to illegally purchase drugs, guns, and prostitutes.

  • of course he's just fine with this kind of trick when its for the right cause or at least not biting one of his pets.

• May N.Y. Businesses Fire Employees for Using Parler and Gab? – Reason.com

TechSuck

• Social media damages teenagers' mental health, report says

• The world is dangerously dependent on Taiwan for semiconductors

• All .NET 5 projects build failing because MS certificate has expired

• Esri targets developers with new ArcGIS Platform as a service

• Twitter is opening up its full tweet archive to academic researchers for free - The Verge

• Google, Apple sued for failing to give Telegram chat app the Parler put-down treatment • The Register

• GitLab removes its 'starter' tier: Users must either pay 5x more or lose features • The Register

Economicon

• U.S. Suffers Sharpest Rise in Poverty Rate in More Than 50 Years

• Boeing Reports Record Loss

• Blackstone to Buy an Allstate Life Business for $2.8B

• Seriously Delinquent Mortgage Loans Up 1.7 Million in 2020 - DSNews

• Bitcoin has lost nearly $200 billion in market cap in just three weeks, as the token slips below $30,000

• Orders to US factories for big-ticket manufactured goods rose modest 0.2% ...

  • WSJ:

  the eighth straight month of gains. The increase, however, was the smallest since last August.

• Jack Ma's Ant Group reportedly plans to transform into a financial holding company ...

GME / Shorts

As I gather, originally, a hedge fund guy or two said "we're shorting gamestop" and some others decided to jump on the other side of the trade and gamestop looks to settle friday (? nfi) much higher than those short positions allowed for so big win for little guys, big loss for some big guys.

But. Now we've got people buying up options and bidding up and holding worthless stocks and shit (cf Blockbuster in the name of whatever unholy influences work here). lots of little guys are going to be losing big and have no ability to pay; the bookies have been making up money to lend and pay and it aint there now when they're gonna call for it back.

Not just that, but when those calls start to come in, people start to bail out of what they have to try paying back what they can, and that sales slump is just the thing for a market overvalued like this, right?

Oh and that Blackrock climate stuff; does that mean that the Fed / Treasury chosen child for the "buy anything and everything line must go up" bailout is now only open to those companies that are properly carbon neutered? Who gets to certify the anointed there?

• dang on HN: "For pointers to other active and/or recent vertices of this story graph, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25933543 "

• from this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25936985

At $90 a share, Melvin had to get a $2.75bn capital injection to stay afloat. That was the time to get out. They instead tried to force a sell-off so they could buy up cheap shares and reduce the bleeding. That failed. For roughly every $12 over $90, Melvin Capital lost $1 billion. Well at $348 a share, they're now negative $21.5bn in value. Its over. Their greed has resulted in their utter destruction.

• another:

The details: a hedge fund decided to short retail stocks during the pandemic. They overextended with a naked short position against GameStop (that brick and mortar video game retailer) that exceeds not only the share float by a large margin but even the total number of shares in existence.

u/DeepFuckingValue on r/wallstreetbets discovered this a month or so ago, took out a $50k position, and let the rest of the sub in on it. That position is now worth $50M, a 1,000x increase.

Now there is literally no limit to the upside of a short squeeze. The price goes up high enough and the short sellers declare bankruptcy and liquidate their positions to cover the cost of purchasing shares. If they still come up short, then the same happens to the banks that lend to them . If that comes short, the brokerage must step up. At that point there’d probably be government intervention and a bailout. The WSB motto has become “we can stay retarded longer than they can stay solvent.”

According to a naïve view of the law, at least, that is correct. Far more likely there will be market outages and regulator shenanigans at undo the situation. Nobody is more of a sore loser than the establishment.

• Nasdaq CEO Friedman says the exchange will halt trading in a stock if they link unusual activity to social media chatter | Markets Insider

• Most Shorted Names Soar After WallStreetBets Reopens | ZeroHedge

• Discord bans the r/WallStreetBets server

  • Discord Bans R/WallStreetBets for Hate Speech Violations

  • HN thread: Discord bans the r/WallStreetBets server | Hacker News

• WSB Went Private on Reddit

• ​​​​​​​Biden Administration Is "Monitoring" Marketwide Short Squeeze | ZeroHedge

  Psaki reminded everyone that "the stock market isn't the only measure of the health of our economy." ​

  • Jen Psaki On GameStop Stock Surge: ‘We Have The First Female Treasury Secretary.’

• SEC.gov | Joint Statement Regarding Ongoing Market Volatility

  We are aware of and actively monitoring the on-going market volatility in the options and equities markets and, consistent with our mission to protect investors and maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, we are working with our fellow regulators to assess the situation and review the activities of regulated entities, financial intermediaries, and other market participants.

• Ameritrade restricted trading in GameStop, AMC amid volume spike

  • In Unprecedented Move, TD Ameritrade Puts "Restrictions" On Transactions In GME, AMC | ZeroHedge

• GameStop: Reddit users claim victory as $13bn hedge fund closes position

• Gamestop Insanity: Stock Hits $385, Even After Shorts Melvin, Citron Capitulate | ZeroHedge

  • Retail Brokerages Suffer Widespread Outages As Short-Squeeze Surge Accelerates | ZeroHedge

• Melvin Capital, to file bankruptcy as soon as next week according to sources

• WallStreetBets Reportedly Wins Its Battle Against GameStop Short

• AMC is today's GameStop. A Reddit mob sent its stock more than 200% higher

• GameStop's surge has made its 3 largest shareholders billions overnight

• GameStop stock continues to soar, as small traders team up against institutions

• GameStop Short-Sellers Reload Bets After $6B Loss

• Robinhood CEO says most customers are ‘buy and hold’ in GameStop trading frenzy

• Blockbuster up 4900% in 2 days

• (Australia) GameStop-Reddit frenzy causes Australian mining company GME shares to soar

• (Video) Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman on monitoring stock trading fueled by social media

BidenTime

• FLASHBACK: Biden Said ‘You Can’t Legislate By Executive Orders Unless You’re A Dictator’ – Summit News

• Biden administration delays Chinese military investment ban

• Biden starts staffing a commission on Supreme Court reform - POLITICO

• Climate change: Biden suspends oil and gas leasing in executive action

• 'Inspired Choice': Biden Appoints Sociologist Alondra Nelson to Top Science Post - Scientific American

  Scientists praise US president’s selection of the bioethics and social inequality specialist

• Week 1 and counting in the Biden-Harris era as Latinos wait on immigration promises

• Senate begins confirmation hearing for Jennifer Granholm as energy secretary

• Linda Thomas-Greenfield begins confirmation as President Joe Biden's U.N. ambassador

• Where Biden's Cabinet nominees stand

Capitol Riot / National Guard

• House Republicans ask for briefing on threats keeping National Guard in DC

  • The Occupation Of Washington Is Pure Panic Porn. You Are The Target

• US Capitol police union blasts leadership for 'unconscionable' lack of preparation leading up to riot - CNNPolitics

• ‘How to Make a Bomb’ Was a Top 10 Google Search Term in September and October – Homeland Security Today

• Proud Boys Leader Was 'Prolific' FBI Snitch: Court Docs | ZeroHedge

  • Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was an FBI informant

Trumpoline

• Social Media Influencer Charged with Election Interference Stemming from Voter Disinformation Campaign | OPA | Department of Justice

  • Florida Man Arrested Over 2016 Election Memes Designed To "Trick" Hillary Voters | ZeroHedge

• DHS Issues New Terror Advisory On "Domestic Violent Extremists" Who "Object To Presidential Transition" | ZeroHedge

  • National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin - January 27, 2021 | Homeland Security

  Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.

• Trump is gone. But the threat of right-wing violence that arose under his watch remains.

  • Trump's gone, but the GOP's conspiracy theory cesspool is here to stay

• The Night of the Rubber Knives

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Liked Posts Calling For Killing Democratic Politicians: Reports

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly endorsed executing Democrats on Facebook

  • Hillary Clinton says Greene should 'be on a watch list,' not in Congress

• YouTube ban: Google extends suspension of former President ...

• YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook continue bans over Trump election claims

• Reporter Flees the US After Antifa Death Threats

• Michigan Man Pleads Guilty in Plot to Kidnap Governor

World

• UN urges global unity to counter rise of neo-Nazis

• Don't put the wrong fields in your database 10,000,000 voters racially profiled by Conservatives | Open Rights Group

  The ICO stopped short of saying that ethnic profiling was unlawful. We believe it is likely to be. The Conservatives purchased and used data that drew on people’s names to estimate (‘onomastic data’) an individual’s country of origin, ethnicity, and religion.

• Modi Reform Backlash Sparks Chaos In New Delhi As Farmers Attack Police

  • Frequently Asked Questions on Farmer protests | by Yogesh Upadhyaya | Jan, 2021 | Medium

• Riots sparked by COVID lockdown hit Lebanon’s Tripoli for 3rd day

• Norway Closes Border To All But Essential Travel

COVID

• Hydrogen Peroxide Mouthwash and Gargle to Limit SARS-CoV-2 Infection

• Caldara: Move over granny; press, politicians jump vaccine line – Complete Colorado – Page Two

• Why Scientists Are Worried About the Variant from Brazil

  • Resurgence of Covid-19 in Manaus, Brazil, despite high seroprevalence

• Covid: Wrexham suspicious package suspends vaccine production - BBC News

• Wisconsin pharmacist pleads guilty to destroying hundreds of COVID-19 ...

• MIA: Where Have All the Vaccines Gone? CDC Says Only Half of Shots Feds Sent to States Were Used

• Covid Anal Swabs for Beijing Residents More Accurate, Says Chinese Expert

• Vaccines have been oversold as the pandemic exit strategy

• Anal swabs now used for COVID testing in China

  • China uses anal swabs to test for Covid-19

• Peru: Sharp Reductions in Covid-19 Deaths with Ivermectin Treatments

Climate

• Biden’s “all of government” plan for climate, explained

• Joe Biden made climate change a national security priority — what’s next?

Obit

• Cloris Leachman, Emmy and Oscar Winner, Dies at 94